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T O P I C R E V I E W

Robert Pearlman

The Washington Post reports about the plans by some to use the moon as off-planet storage for the religious, cultural and even genetic trappings of humanity.

Proponents of this idea initially plan to rely on groups vying to win millions in a Google-backed space-flight competition, with the first of those missions possibly departing by the end of 2015.

Eventually, commercial moon landers may help carry a diverse library of cultural and biological records to the lunar surface, to be preserved in case Earth suffers a pandemic plague, nuclear holocaust or lethal asteroid strike.

The first artifacts to shoot for the moon might be three religious and philosophical texts. The Torah on the Moon project, based in Tel Aviv, has been courting private firms to deliver a handwritten Jewish scroll called a sefer Torah to the lunar surface. Later flights would carry Hindu scriptures called the Veda and the I Ching, an ancient Chinese philosophical work.

Each document would be housed in a capsule designed to protect it from the moon’s harsh radiation and temperature changes for at least 10,000 years.

sts205cdr

If we're wiped out, what's the point? I don't get it. Can anyone enlighten me?

Robert Pearlman

Why did we place a plaque on the Pioneer probes or a record on the Voyagers?

It doesn't even need to be extraterrestrial. Short of the Sun eventually enveloping the Earth, even if humans go extinct, life may continue to evolve until the point that another form of Earthlings make their own giant leap and discover the remnants of their long-extinct cousins. (Of course, such a scenario would require more than the cited 10,000 year lifespan of the lunar archive.)

schnappsicle

It seems to me that those things would almost be safer here on Earth where we could quickly move them out of harm's way (in case of asteroid impact). It would be much more difficult to try to save something if it were on the moon.

gliderpilotuk

Oh, the irony of having religious texts on the Moon when we've all been wiped out in a nuclear holocaust!

DNA and biological samples, yes. Maybe historical records but given organised religion's track record I'd put that way down the list of priorities.

cspg

Some people have way too much free time...

And by the way, isn't there a place on Earth where seeds are already placed in storage... just in case? (Don't remember where.)

Totally agree. There is one small problem with this though. Whose DNA should be preserved?

SkyMan1958

quote:Originally posted by cspg:And by the way, isn't there a place on Earth where seeds are already placed in storage... just in case?

Most of the larger countries have some sort of seed banks. However, as benign as you might think those seed banks would be, there are nut jobs that target them. Peru has the largest seed (?) bank for varieties/species of potatoes in the world, yet the storage site was targeted by the Shining Path guerrillas.

Fra Mauro

Good idea in a logical society, but not on this planet in 2014. Space exploration is underfunded as it is and now we are going to send artifacts there? Also, there would be a political and perhaps a legal battle, even if these were private companies.

Side note — we get the artifacts there but we can't get people there.

Robert Pearlman

quote:Originally posted by Fra Mauro:Also, there would be a political and perhaps a legal battle, even if these were private companies.

I don't see why there would be, especially if piggybacking with the Google Lunar X Prize rovers as the original article noted. There are no laws, to my knowledge, that preclude depositing objects on the lunar surface and Congress hasn't raised any objections to GLXP (again, to my knowledge).